You Must Remember This

Wednesday, 13 February 2013

HYDE PARK ON HUDSON

Comedy of Manners meets Freudian Psychodrama

The last three years have done some
interesting things with the legacy of King George VI. Colin Firth’s sensitive
portrayal of the speech-impaired monarch who led Britain through the Second
World War rightfully won the Oscar (though the film that showcased it, The King’s Speech, was something of a
“worthy” choice for the Best Picture of 2010). ‘Bertie’, as he was known
amongst the Windsors, also appears as a supporting character in last year’s W.E., documenting the controversial
relationship between George’s brother King Edward VII and American divorcee
Wallace Simpson, which led to Edward’s abdication.

While the previous films
covered the events surrounding HRH’s unwilling and unexpected ascension to the
throne, Hyde Park on Hudson is
focused around a single week in the same period during which both King George and
Queen Elizabeth AKA the Queen Mother (Samuel West and Olivia Colman) paid visit to the family
home of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Bill Murray) to discuss the
approaching war.

These events are shown from the perspective
not only of their royal highnesses, but also of Margaret Suckley (Laura
Linney), a distant cousin of FDR who found herself drawn fatefully back into
his affairs after many years of estrangement. Though Margaret acts as narrator
for most of the film, it’s FDR who provides the heart and soul. The ever-genial
Murray gives a reliably knowing, twinkly-eyed performance as the erstwhile
Commander in Chief, a man whose physical enfeeblement belies his irascible wit,
as well as his more unsavory appetites. However, Hyde Park on Hudson, as directed by Roger Michell,never scales the dramatic heights of
Spielberg’s Lincoln.

The film itself
bears more similarity to Three Days in
May, playwright Ben Brown’s examination of Churchill’s cabinet tottering on
the knife’s edge of appeasement-war. However, Hyde Park on Hudson settles for portentous grumbling about the
state of Europe and the comedy of manners surrounding the royal visit. ‘Will
His Majesty deign to eat a hotdog?’ is presented as a key diplomatic issue.

Samuel West makes a personable Bertie, but
one lacking the character or resolve we might recognize from The King’s Speech – he stands almost in
awe of elder statesman FDR and it’s up to the kindly politician to set him on
the track to become the man of history the time’s demand. Olivia Colman brings
a sense of incredulity and exasperation as the great British matriarch who
finds herself out of her depth amidst the ranks of forthright Yanks (personally
I prefer her performance to that of Helena Bonham Carter in the same role,
though it’s unlikely to receive the same attention, coming as it does in the
weaker film). The steely Eleanor (Olivia Williams) helps keep the house in
order, still close to FDR despite their estrangement, and the cast as a whole
does solid work. At this point in the proceedings, Hyde Park on Hudson is a two and a half star film: superficially
charming and well written, but with not much by the way of depth.

Then comes a bizarre tonal shift that
throws everything that has come before and everything that follows it into a
far more sinister light. Spoilers are unavoidable here in detailing this
(mostly) untelegraphed change of gears. Suckley, in herself a bland and not
particularly interesting individual, has become FDR’s mistress – we are privy
to posterity’s most genteel handjob, performed in the front seats of FDR’s
specially modified town car in the middle of the field of flowers.

It’s not
until Suckley plays a late night visit to FDR’s woodland cottage, his home away
from home, that things get really weird. A glimpse of white flesh in the
windows behind Suckley as she sits smoking on the porch – a ghostly figure
straight out of a horror movie – and we are thrown into a world of sexual
intrigue. FDR as it transpires, far from a more looking for intimacy and
affection, is a serial adulterer and perennial horndog, using the Secret
Service to schedule his dalliances. Suddenly the whole thing about hotdogs is
cast in a far more Freudian (and, indeed, far more interesting) light with the
consummation of their national interest.

FDR suddenly becomes, in the parlance of
the times, a cad – in somewhat franker terms, a manipulative bastard. Suckley’s
naiveté, previously somewhat dull, now becomes a point of interest, her having
led down the garden path by a man whom she admired and trusted. As a result, Hyde Park on Hudson has a truncated feel
to it: a mishmash of two incompatible modes – semi farce and psychological
portrait. Though this is by far the most
interesting element of the narrative it never feels like it’s been concretely
established, and, indeed, the film quickly tries to brush over the moral
implications of it. Suckley’s final line of narration is that FDR was her
secret, rather than her being his – an attempt to reclaim their affair as a
liberating incident. Considering the context in which this declaration is set,
it’s less than convincing.

It’s sad given the potential: the first reigning
British monarch to make an appearance in The States during the time on their
reign, chief of the colonialists visiting their former colony in his time of
need. As it stands, were someone to ask, “You know that time when George VI and the Queen Mother visited FDR in Hyde Park, New York”, I’d have to respond, “Not in any meaningful way..."

Verdict:
Choosing the present the 32nd President of the United States of a
soft-spoken, beguiling letch may have certainly be a novel approach to the man
who saw America out of the Great Depression, but even visiting royalty and the encroaching
threat of World War can’t do much to liven up proceedings. All fuss, no muss – Hyde Park on Hudson can never quite
decide what it wants to be and so ends up being nothing much.

About Me

BA in English and Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London; MA in Screenwriting from the London Film School. Formerly Film & TV Editor for London-based culture site The Metropolist (www.themetropolist.com) and Official Sidekick (Assistant Editor) of superhero site A Place to Hang Your Cape (www.ap2hyc.com). Currently member of the Online Film Critics Society (http://www.ofcs.org/robert-wallis/). Follow me on Twitter @robertmwallis or on Facebook at Of All the Film Blogs (https://www.facebook.com/OfAllTheFilmBlogs?fref=ts).